When you started teaching...

[TheFifthKey]

The thread about how office jobs have changed got me thinking about how teaching has changed (apart from turning from a great job into a crap one...)

I started in 2003. Nobody used emails and we had internal memo envelopes used between buildings. This carried on for years! Not every room had a computer and we did registers on Bromcoms (handheld things, like overgrown Kindles, that did registers and you could also do reports etc on. They used AA batteries and were always running out of power! You'd have to send a kid down to the office for batteries if you didn't keep a secret stash).

No projectors, the odd Smart board which was regarded as the very height of technology (even though they were utterly shit to write on). Mobile phones weren't an issue as hardly any kids used them and even then they were basic ones. No name badges, no passes, no lanyards, all doors left unlocked all the time and half the site was barely even fenced.

People used to go to the pub on Friday after school and on my last day of teaching practice the department took me to the pub at lunchtime and we had a drink!

Oh, and proper paper registers - you used to try and fill them in so the slanty lines were all parallel.

We still have proper paper registers in primary.
I get annoyed when someone else takes my class and makes a mess of it.

Mineof we have a mechanical calculator in our downstairs toilet. Very few people know what it is and all children seem fascinated by it!

One of my teaching pacts schools in 2003 still had a roller blackboard in one of the maths rooms. They also still had a Banda machine that was used whenever the photocopier broke (at least once a week everybody got purple smelly worksheets). I loved my ohp, we only got rid of the last one from my department last year not that anyone used it anymore but it felt sad to get rid of it I have a roller whiteboard that is used far more often than my projector.

I loved the smell of the banda copier!

Late 80s - banda machine, blackboards including the ones which rotated, no TAs, no National Curriculum, had to collect dinner money/trip money, Baker Days were just being introduced, no PPA in Primary, Kent Maths Project and School Maths Project cards to work through (very little whole class maths teaching), teaching times tables was not encouraged...
We still have paper registers in this area.

I started training with the 10 ringbinder NC! And yes, one of my training schools had a head who thought female teachers should wear skirts.

YY to a blackboard. I also taught in the days of an 'integrated day' when you didn't need a million resources because you could just have a few to suit a small group. Many of my colleagues who began teaching later practically explode when I suggest doing 2 completely different things in a classroom at the same time- they simply can't get their heads around it.

We had 2 tellys- one for upstairs and 1 for downstairs, plus one BBC computer in the classroom. I remember the ICT suite being built, and now schools are looking at converting these to classrooms and having ipads/laptops instead.

I taught pre literacy and numeracy hour- having those strategies come in was interesting. Have seen many versions of them too.

Pre internet, we used to keep paper plans/resources- keep everything! And have a plethora of teaching books and stacks of worksheets that children weren't allowed to write on. In fact, I am just gaining the confidence to get rid of stuff now- it's available online somewhere.

I left school in 2004 :) We didn't have fancy electronic registers! Paper ones for us. IIRC electronic whiteboards came in in my last couple of years at school, at first we had just two in the whole school, then one for each department. They always seemed to have smeary pen marks on them and/or angry notes attached explaining that you couldn't use normal whiteboard pens on the IW screen. Lots of classrooms still had blackboards - probably about 50/50. Some of them had the kind of blackboards which you could pull up or down and they were on a kind of loop. We had a mixture of projectors attached to laptops and OHPs.

I loved topics at primary school.

DC is at school in Germany now and I've taught in a school classroom here. It's v low tech, no computer usage until (equiv of) year 3 or 4, definitely no interactive whiteboards or projectors in the classroom though there might be an OHP, and if you suggested that iPads might have educational relevance you'd be looked at like you were from Mars. Blackboards either with rollers or fold out leaves, I've only seen whiteboards in companies, never in children's schools.

The registers I believe are still paper too.

But most children have smartphones from about the age of 9 or 10.

I qualified in '93. Yes to all the above. Whenever I had a meeting with the head she would offer me a cig in her office . Us smokers used to smoke behind a door in the infant stairwell!
Pub on Friday lunch time- I always had a lager.
Once the kids were asleep on school journey we would sit in the evening drinking wine.
All work sheets were handwritten as were reports.
NoTAs no PPA you were in full time on your own from your first day.
I was taught to teach using a carousel system. All work was differentiated. Nc was those ringer binders.
I think it was better than it is mow.

Rewarding children on a Friday by letting them bang the chalk dust out of blackboard rubbers. Dry skin from chalky fingers.
The novelty of whiteboard pens. Supply teachers accidentally using permanent markers on it.
Being amazed at projectors and photocopiable translucent sheets.
Having four computers in school with access to the internet. Not my classroom though.
Wheeling in the big TVs.
In 1995, weekly plans that covered one side of A4.
Spending one week on SATs revision. My first year of teaching (1995) the head teacher and head of year were absent on the first morning of SATs and me (nqt) not knowing where the SATs papers were. No one knew where they were. They were found ten minutes before the first test in the stock cupboard!

The biggest difference for me is the range of needs. Yep, there could be up to 40 in a class but there were no EAL pupils at all and no-one who needed 1-1 adult support to function. We had a few children who I now recognise to be autistic but they were generally perceived as a bit quirky. They usually coped well as it was a much quieter and more structured (yet at the same time somehow less pressured?) environment.

Textbooks were the order of the day. You prided yourself on a silent classroom. If the HT walked past your class and they were talking you'd feel totally incompetent.

If it was a lovely autumn day you could just go and collect leaves. If it was a gorgeous summer day you'd take them all out and play rounders.

I'v definitely got the rose-tinted glasses on but it was proper teaching.

I had forgotten about the ring binder NC!

I remember tick and flick marking. Chalk boards. Responding to student needs rather than a rigid curriculum. Appropriate course rather than forcing students through multiple GCSEs. Whole lessons of discussion with the lesson plan out the window and nothing in the book.

Hate what Gove did to teaching and now a broken ex teacher. This thread has brought back some lovely possibly rose tinted memories. Thank you.

Started in 1991. NC ring binders, Banda machine, OHPs, no lesson observations, no PPA. There was a TA whose job it was to record the programmes from the radio ( music and movement?) from the radio onto cassettes. Roller blackboards, red pens. Big tv that got wheeled in to your classroom. One big shared computer with CD ROM discs if you were lucky.
Feeling all nostalgic now.

Friday lunchtime at the pub.
No weekend work.
No parents contacting the school that I remember.
(Really nostalgic now ...)

6 weeks notice of OFSTED ... I'll stop in a minute :)

Am I allowed to say when I started teaching the National Curriculum hadn't appeared yet??? Oh for those hallowed days when you could veer widely off course if it was appropriate....
I was also around when PSE (as it was called then) came into being 'Let's make those lemons into lemonade!!! It was ghastly).
And the blessed Records of Achievement - no negative comments, although you could always work it in, if they were a complete pain, if you tried.
Stealth boast warning:
I have a rollerboard, now with whiteboard panels, and I love it!

I started in 1991. We always went to the pub on the Friday lunchtime for a drink! The kids had an extra 20 mins at lunchtime to allow for it! Friday afternoon would be art.

I was 'high tech' using my IWB and shock MS excel.

I like paper registers. I still don't like electronic ones.

Most lessons were a projector and whiteboard. I kind of likes the ability to draw using a pen over the slides. As a geographer it helped when using maps. I've never found smartboards as good at that.

Cover. Almost every sodding free.

Goodwill. Got a family funeral? Yeah, go. As long as you're happy to cover Jan in English when her kid has their nativity then we're all good. Not any more

Being able to be more honest on reports. I dream of being able to write "your child is an overindulged little oik and needs to learn the world doesn't revolve around them"

You could smoke in the staffroom...fond memories.

I've got a roller board too mineof and I love it too. We don't have smart boards in my department because we hated them and asked for them to be removed. We've still got the projectors connected to our laptops, but they project onto a normal whiteboard so we can write on them with a normal board pen.

anyone else remember duplicating machines? I could never remember if it was shiny side up or not, so had to sneak all the sheets I ruined out of the stock room and take them home to dispose of. Loved the smell though, probably wouldn't be allowed now.